Life has been busy.  I wrote my first paper for b-school last week, and my reading list has gone through the roof.  I needed a simple project to knit – something peaceful, something easy.  I was not only looking for comfort knitting; I was looking for comfort.  I wanted to knit a sweater for myself that would be easy to wear, something to throw on with my jeans while I was busy studying.  I didn’t want much shaping.  I also wanted a pattern that I could be absolutely sure of – no fiddling, no reinterpretations, no maths, no mods.  Something that I knew would fit perfectly just as it was written.  In short, I wanted something by Carol Feller.

Last year, I knit only four sweaters.  The year before I knit eight, and two were designed by Carol Feller.  Those were my Killybegs cardigan:

and my Ravi:

What I needed to fill my comfort knitting craving was another helping of something Carol.  This something:

This is Carpino, designed by Carol Feller for Brooklyn Tweed and published in Wool People 6.  It is knit with BT Loft, a yarn that I had wanted to try for a while (it’s basically a fingering weight version of Shelter).  I ordered the yarn on a complete whim (from my favorite, Loop, in London) and it arrived the very next day!  Doug was in Denmark and the girls are both in Canada, so I had to shanghai a co-worker during our lunch hour to help me wind a ball.  Despite the paper I was busily researching and writing (or maybe because of it) I cast on immediately.

Today is a lovely, lazy Saturday.  The paper is submitted, Doug is back home and the sun is shining (at long last!).  I have finished the yoke, divided off the sleeves, and started knitting the body, so I was able to try the sweater on for size:

And what do you know?  The fit is perfect.   No fuss, straight-up comfort knitting.  The only uncomfortable thing about this was standing in the wind in the cold (4 degrees today) in a tank top and trying not to shiver while Doug took these photos.

The photo above shows the beautiful shaping of the shoulder. It also picks up the flecks of colour in the yarn – see the reds and blues?  Boy, do I love tweed!  (There is definitely some rolling going on at the back neck, which I hope a good block will fix, because I really like the I-cord edging on the pattern, and don’t want to put in ribbing to control this.)  Rarely does a sweater fit just right at this point and I often find myself ripping back to before the division and recalculating things.  Even the fit across the back is good:

This yarn is one that knitters either love or hate.  So far, I seem to be in the “love” camp.  The yarn is very fine and breakable and I think some knitting styles must “pull” at the yarn too much causing it to snap.  I haven’t had any trouble and find it amazingly soft and pretty.  I will need to wash and wear it a bit before I can make a true judgement, but so far so good.

The pattern comes with some comments from Carol.   She says

“I love the casual nature of sweatshirts but I wanted to add just a little more interest.  The addition of a honeycomb lace panel at the front and delicate shoulder shaping makes this a very distinctive knitted sweatshirt.”

Yes, that’s just what I was looking for – comfort knitting at it best.